BORGES
I describe. I write. Now as for the color yellow, there is a physical
explanation of that. When I began to lose my sight, the last color I
saw, or the last color, rather, that stood out, because of course now I
know that your coat is not the same color as this table or of the
woodwork behind you—the last color to stand out was yellow because it is
the most vivid of colors. That's why you have the Yellow Cab Company in
the United States. At first they thought of making the cars scarlet.
Then somebody found out that at night or when there was a fog that
yellow stood out in a more vivid way than scarlet. So you have yellow
cabs because anybody can pick them out. Now when I began to lose my
eyesight, when the world began to fade away from me, there was a time
among my friends . . . well they made, they poked fun at me because I
was always wearing yellow neckties. Then they thought I really liked
yellow, although it really was too glaring. I said, “Yes, to you, but
not to me, because it is the only color I can see, practically!” I live
in a gray world, rather like the silver-screen world. But yellow stands
out. That might account for it. I remember a joke of Oscar Wilde's: a
friend of his had a tie with yellow, red, and so on in it, and Wilde
said, Oh, my dear fellow, only a deaf man could wear a tie like that!
INTERVIEWER
He might have been talking about the yellow necktie I have on now.
BORGES
Ah, well. I remember telling that story to a lady who missed the
whole point. She said, “Of course, it must be because being deaf he
couldn't hear what people were saying about his necktie.” That might
have amused Oscar Wilde, no?
INTERVIEWER
I'd like to have heard his reply to that.
BORGES
Yes, of course. I never heard of such a case of something being so
perfectly misunderstood. The perfection of stupidity. Of course, Wilde's
remark is a witty translation of an idea; in Spanish as well as English
you speak of a “loud color.” A “loud color” is a common phrase, but
then the things that are said in literature are always the same. What is
important is the way they are said. Looking for metaphors, for example:
When I was a young man I was always hunting for new metaphors. Then I
found out that really good metaphors are always the same. I mean you
compare time to a road, death to sleeping, life to dreaming, and those
are the great metaphors in literature because they correspond to
something essential. If you invent metaphors, they are apt to be
surprising during the fraction of a second, but they strike no deep
emotion whatever. If you think of life as a dream, that is a thought, a
thought that is real, or at least that most men are bound to have, no?
“What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.” I think that's
better than the idea of shocking people, than finding connections
between things that have never been connected before, because there is
no real connection, so the whole thing is a kind of juggling.
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